Jackpot
by Esther-Channah
Summary: Foggy's got a bad case of cabin fever. Matt's had a rough night. Sometimes a friendly game of Monopoly can make everything better.


Disclaimer: Daredevil created by Stan Lee and Bill Everett, with input from Jack Kirby. Daredevil, Matt Murdock and Foggy Nelson are the property of Marvel Comics. I am receiving no financial remuneration for this work of fan-fiction.

The Monopoly game was first published by Parker Brothers in 1935 and is now produced by Hasbro. According to the Hasbro Gaming site, the Braille edition was created in the 1970s, though the specific year and designer are not listed.

A/N: Thanks to Kathy and Debbie for the beta! Thanks to Green_grrrl at Little_Details on Livejournal for information on how San Francisco's buildings have changed in the last ten years.

A/N: As a kid, I always played Monopoly with a jackpot—won by landing on Free Parking—as did everyone I knew. It was a surprise to me to find out that there actually isn't such a thing in the official rules.

Timeline: Daredevil Vol. 4, shortly after #4

References: Daredevil, Volume 3, #s 8, 23. Volume 4, #s 2–4

**Jackpot**

On an evening like this, Foggy wondered whether faking his death had only ensured that he would die of boredom long before he had to worry about dying of cancer. Sure, Matt had ensured that the safe-house was equipped with satellite TV, a plethora of DVDs, and a state-of-the-art computer with internet and on-demand streaming media. There was only so long he could stay cooped up, no matter how large and comfortable the coop was.

Nobody actually up and _said_ he wasn't free to come and go as he pleased. They just asked him whether he thought it was 'wise' under the circumstances. These days, Foggy tried his best not to hate Matt for doing this to him. He reminded himself that when Matt had told him that he was planning to reveal himself as Daredevil, Foggy had encouraged it. No, once he'd understood Matt's motivations, he'd demanded it. Even when Matt had pointed out that Foggy would be in greater danger—at a time when he would be ill-equipped to deal with it—Foggy had insisted that Matt go through with the idea, rather than compromise his integrity, even for an instant. It had made Foggy feel—just for a moment—like the 'man without fear' he'd told Matt to teach him to become, the better to cope with his condition. Stupid idea. Stupid Matt for listening to him.

Tonight, when the chemo wasn't knocking his stomach for a loop, when there was no pain on the inside of his cheeks to scare him into thinking he was on the verge of developing mouth sores—or worse, mouth ulcers or infections—when he could put a decent amount of food on a plate and actually have the appetite to finish it in one sitting, he wanted to do something else besides watch other people on a screen—people who, unlike him, got to go outside or visit friends or just enjoy life.

He'd tried dropping in on Matt at the office earlier. He'd even taken the precaution of donning a disguise first. Matt had been out, but Kirsten had read him the riot act. Foggy was still trying to figure out whether he'd been more annoyed at her for that reception, or at himself for thinking either she or Matt would approve of his being out of the safe-house, disguise or no disguise.

On an evening like this, he seriously had to ask himself why he still put up with everything Matt put him through...

* * *

San Francisco had changed. As Daredevil swung through the Mid-Market, heading for home, he was momentarily disoriented by a tall edifice that—going by the balconies—appeared to be an apartment complex. It hadn't been here the last time he'd passed through this area, nearly a decade earlier. It wasn't quite as confusing as he'd found the new construction around San Francisco General; he hadn't realized just how much he'd once relied on both the empty space and the scents of trees, grass, and other vegetation to help him get his bearings. All of that was gone now, replaced by chain-link fences and iron girders. Transbay Center... Mission Bay... the list of changes went on. When had those two-story flats on Delores been replaced by mid-rises? What had happened to S&amp;C Ford Auto Sales? As he headed along Valencia, toward 16th Street, he realized that something else was missing. The taquerías were as aromatic as ever, but where was Bombay Bazaar with its heady fragrances of spices and incense?

He swung upwards and did his best to ignore the fire that sliced across his abdomen where the Owl had slashed him earlier. The wounds were long, but shallow and superficial; his suit had borne the brunt of the attack. Still hurt like hell, though.

As Daredevil slowly made his way north, passing quite a bit closer to street level than he was used to after years of sailing between the skyscrapers of Manhattan, his mind was focused elsewhere.

He'd gotten angry tonight, angrier than he'd been in a long time. And he couldn't shake the feeling that, regardless of provocation—and he had been _plenty_ provoked—he'd ended up kicking a man when he was down.

As his body relaxed into the familiar rhythm—rising and dipping through the air, as he swung from one building to the next—Daredevil's mind began replaying his last conversation with the Shroud. It hadn't gone well. Truth be told, it had been more like a lecture on his part... or a one-sided argument. Too bad nobody had been on-hand to object.

Earlier, he'd told the Shroud that he had a low tolerance for bullies. That had been an understatement. The truth was, he _hated_ bullies. But, more than that, he hated saying and doing things that made him think he was becoming one. Nietzsche's words sprang to mind: _He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee._ If he'd still had his eyesight, Daredevil wondered, what would he see, were he to gaze into that hypothetical abyss tonight? His imaginings were not comforting.

He came to a halt at the edge of a rooftop and realized that he wasn't sure where he'd gotten to. He stood still, concentrating, probing for sensory clues. There was a salt tang in the air, the smell of the ocean, mingled with those of garlic, oil, and potatoes. He recognized the combination, realized where he had to be, and shook his head in disbelief. Somehow, he'd gotten mixed up, gone east instead of west, and ended up all the way over at AT&amp;T Park. He couldn't remember the last time that had happened. It never would have happened in New York—he knew that city far too well for anything of that nature. He probably could have found his way from the Harlem River to the South Street Seaport in a blizzard with a head-cold, though he was just as glad he'd never had to put that supposition to the test.

He was even more rattled than he'd thought.

Or maybe, he knew that when he was feeling this tense, going home to an empty house was the last thing he should do and he was subconsciously delaying the inevitable. He felt a pang of guilt, remembering that Kirsten had told him Foggy had come by that afternoon. She'd been annoyed. Truth be told, he had been, too—for all of five minutes. He knew from bitter personal experience what it was like to spend weeks shut away from the world. Since they'd moved to San Francisco, Matt had gone by the safe-house when he could, but enforced isolation had to be hard on Foggy. How could it not be?

Daredevil retraced his steps to the opposite side of the rooftop. He paused for a moment, calculating the best route to take to get back to Pacific Heights. If he hustled, Foggy would probably still be awake.

* * *

There were times that Foggy wished that he and Matt could trade places. He'd asked Matt once—right before the diagnosis—to let him experience the night the way Daredevil did, practically flying through the air, more than a hundred stories high, his life hanging by a slender cord fired out of a collapsible billy-club. It had been terrifying. It had been insane. It had been _incredible_. So incredible, in fact, that when Matt had deposited him, sweating and shaking, through their office window and onto the floor of Nelson and Murdock, the only thing that he'd been able to say in response to Matt's inquiry as to how he'd liked it had been, "Again!" He'd been preparing himself for the worst that night, bracing to hear the worst news possible. He'd had the crazy thought that coming face-to-face with his own mortality while hurtling toward the pavement from the roof of a skyscraper would prepare him. Of course, armed with the certain knowledge that Matt wasn't going to let anything happen to him had made that night fun, as well as scary. And so, in retrospect, it hadn't been a very good preparation for hearing the diagnosis after all.

And he didn't really wish that he and Matt could trade places. He wouldn't wish his current condition on his worst enemy, let alone his best friend. But he wouldn't mind getting a birds-eye tour of San Francisco...

He was tempted to go to bed early, but he did that often enough when the chemo treatments knocked him for a loop. It was almost perverse to turn in at this hour when he wasn't feeling ill. Instead, he sat on the couch, flipping idly back and forth between reruns of _The Simpsons_ and _Night Court_, until he heard a sound on the roof.

For a moment, he tensed, wondering whether one of Matt's old enemies had found him. Then he smiled at the familiar tapping sound on the skylight window over the upstairs hallway. Sure enough, once he'd climbed the stairs and looked up, in the moonlight, he immediately recognized the familiar white cane with the loop at its top resting on the glass—cane, not billy club. He headed into the bedroom, walked briskly to the casement window, and fumbled with the latch. "You know," he muttered as he pushed open the window, "I've got a door. And you've got a key to it." No need to shout up at the roof, when Matt could probably hear him whispering from a block away. He took a few steps back to give his friend a little room.

He didn't have long to wait. Red-gloved hands gripped the top of the window frame. A moment later, Daredevil swung into the room. "It was in my jacket pocket," he said.

"The jacket of the suit you aren't wearing," Foggy sighed. "Fine. I'll bite. What's so urgent that you had to pop in here in costume and couldn't wait until tomorrow?"

Daredevil didn't answer immediately. Instead, he lowered himself into Foggy's desk chair and pushed his cowl back, wiping a gloved hand against his brow with a sigh.

"If this is about my showing up at the office today," Foggy started to say, "I'm—"

"I'm sorry," Matt cut him off.

"Huh?"

Matt's lips curved in a faint smile. "I think the most appropriate phrase for the situation involves Mohammed, a mountain, and a hypothetical."

Foggy snorted. "I think the chemo's shaved off a bit of bulk there. These days, I'm probably more like a hill. Maybe a tree." He frowned. "Hey. What's wrong?"

Matt didn't answer for a moment. He unscrewed one end of his cane, carefully extracted a pair of dark glasses, and put them on. Then he took a deep breath. "I know I haven't been coming by as often as I should. That's on me. And while popping in on you after ten at night isn't exactly making up for it, I figured I could still check if you were awake and up for some company at this hour."

"Oh," Foggy said, with a smile—which was quickly replaced by concern. He hadn't seen the look on Matt's face since their last office Christmas party, right before that whole grave-robbing business had gone down. "Let's go downstairs. I'll put coffee on."

Matt nodded. "You still have that Braille Monopoly game?" he asked.

Foggy blinked. He'd bought the game ages ago; although Matt could read most text with his fingertips, the title deed cards in the standard game—printed on glossy cardstock—were a problem. Matt had appreciated the gesture, but they'd seldom had time to sit down long enough to play. "Yeah," he said, brightening. "I think I could find it."

He knew exactly where it was, in fact. "Are you sure you've got time to hang around for a full game, though?"

Matt hesitated. "I can," he said finally. "That is, unless you'd rather not be up this late."

_He_ could afford to be. Matt was the one who needed to be well-rested tomorrow, if he was going to meet with clients during the day and then put the costume back on at night. Of course, he might also put the costume on if he got bored between appointments. Or if armed terrorists turned up and tried to take the entire courtroom hostage. Or if the presiding judge turned out to be a secret Skrull. All of which were within the realm of possibility. And yet, here was Matt, stopping by after patrol, as though none of that was important. "Gee," Foggy said, "maybe I should drop by the office more often."

Matt flinched and Foggy was immediately sorry he'd made the wisecrack. "Let's set it up and we'll see how it goes," he smiled, relenting.

He got a quick smile and nod from Matt in return.

* * *

At first, their talk—or to be more accurate, their vocalizations—centered mostly on the game. Matt groaned when he rolled a four out of the gate and landed on Income Tax. Foggy bought Connecticut. Matt bought the Electric Company. Double fives sent Foggy to New York; double twos to Indiana, and a six and a five landed him on Pennsylvania Avenue. When Matt's three brought him to Pennsylvania Railroad, he groaned again. "You're not switching the dice out for a rigged pair, are you?"

"Sorry, Matt," Foggy grinned, "you're making those rolls fair and square." He tossed the dice again. "One... two... three... four... five... two hundred for passing 'Go' on six..." He helped himself to two bills from the bank. "Would you care to make sure I'm taking hundreds, not five-hundreds?" he asked, holding out the bills for Matt to inspect. Matt waved them away. "...Seven, and I _will_ purchase Mediterranean, thank you very much."

Matt made a face. "B&amp;O Railroad, double fives," he said, his fingertips brushing the raised dots on the dice. "Here," he passed over five hundred and collected his change. "Next roll," he read the results and sighed. "Go to Jail."

Foggy clucked sympathetically and shook the dice. They landed on the table, then bounced and rolled to the edge of the board. "Hey. Role reversal time. I'm on 'Just Visiting'."

Matt looked stricken. "I wish there was more I could do to make this place seem less like a—"

"I know," Foggy cut him off, instantly contrite. "I don't mean to complain. Really. It's just, on an evening like this, I'd like to be able to get out and _do_ stuff, you know?"

Matt nodded. He picked up the dice.

"Trying for doubles?" Foggy asked. "This early in the game, you should just pay the fifty and go."

"No," Matt said, making the throw. "I can tough it out for a bit."

"I appreciate the show of solidarity," Foggy shot back, taking his own roll, "but you just handed me Saint James Place." He frowned. "Hang on. You're not letting me win, are you?"

Matt shook his head. "Not at all. I think I probably used up most of my luck earlier tonight, though."

"Oh?" Finally. Foggy had been wondering when Matt was going to open up.

Matt went for doubles again and failed. "The Owl has set up shop here," he said slowly. "In order to infiltrate his headquarters, I teamed up with someone local." He considered his words carefully, barely registering when Foggy landed on—and purchased—Kentucky. He made his third attempt at doubles and, when it failed, placed a fifty at the center of the board. It joined the five hundred that Foggy had taken from the bank and laid down at the start of the game and the one-fifty he'd added earlier from landing on Income Tax. Had it been up to the two of them, he reflected as he moved his token back to Pennsylvania Railroad, Free Parking would have been a jackpot square in the official rules, too. "A vigilante named Max Coleridge," he continued. "The Shroud. What's this?" He plucked the bill from Foggy's hand—a brailled fifty.

"Pay attention; I just ended up on B&amp;O," Foggy said. "_Technically_, I don't have to pay rent if you don't notice when I land on your property."

"Ah." He made his roll, moved his shoe token to Chance, and brightened when he read the card. "Advance to St. Charles Place. And I'm passing Go, so..."

"Yep," Foggy reached for the bank. "Two hundred. Less one-forty for St. Charles Place—you are buying it, right?"

Matt nodded. "So, sixty and the title deed, if you don't mind."

Foggy passed them over. As he shook the dice between clasped hands, he said, "That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea. I mean, he probably knows the city better than you do right now."

"He does," Matt nodded. "But he had his own agenda." He picked up the dice to take his turn.

"Not surprising," Foggy said. "People generally do. And his was...?" Matt threw the dice a bit harder than he should have and one bounced off the table and rolled to the floor by Foggy's feet. "Hang on," he said, reaching down. "I got it. Roll again," he said, dropping the die into Matt's hand.

"Thanks. And to answer your question... suicide."

"Pardon?"

Matt clutched both dice tightly in one hand. "I suppose I could find a less-dramatic way to phrase it, but that was what it boiled down to. Taking on an adversary he knew he couldn't beat and banking on that factor to put him out of his misery. He's been through a lot. Orphaned as a kid, trained as a warrior—cost him his eyesight..."

"Must have been like looking in a funhouse mirror and seeing a distorted version of you," Foggy breathed.

"You don't know the half of it." He took the roll and paid Foggy fourteen dollars for landing on St. James. "He's had a number of serious losses over the last little while. Things I _could_ relate to. Except, when I figured out what he was trying to do... I..." he shook his head and his voice lowered to just above a whisper. "I lost it. It pretty much came down to my saying 'I've had it bad, too, but I never got to the point where you are'." His shoulders slumped. "As if that was some reason to feel superior. You know how conventional wisdom has it that bullies usually lash out because of self-esteem issues and needing to make other people feel small so they can feel big?"

"I've heard that," Foggy admitted, taking his turn. "But hasn't the theory been debunked, recently?"

"I don't think so," Matt said. "By which I mean that folks used to believe that there was one main reason why bullies bully. Now they think there are more. In my case, though, I think the first one was dead on."

"You mean, when you were a ki—" Foggy broke off abruptly. "No. You aren't talking about what you went through, are you?"

Matt dropped the dice but didn't check their total. Instead, he folded his hands on the table and rested his head on the crook of his elbow. "Life was sticking a knife into his gut. I twisted it."

Unconsciously, Foggy leaned toward him. Matt continued.

"Now that I've had time to think about it, I think I did lash out at him because I realized how close I'd come to going down Max's path. Waking up to what I did during Shadowland almost did it to me. It was like Max was me if I'd had one more thing go wrong at that point and..."

Again, Foggy's thoughts flashed to that office Christmas party. He'd found Matt sitting in his office in the dark, with a familiar look on his face, though one that had been absent for some time. Foggy had started to comment on how much he'd looked...

_—__Like the old Matt? Like the tortured, guilt-ridden, self-destructive punching bag?_

_—__Like the friend and partner I know best._

_—__Yeah? I hate that guy._

Matt sighed. "I lashed out at him like he was every inner demon I've tried my best to go beyond."

"Yeah."

He burrowed deeper into his elbow. "Great."

"Hey," Foggy said. "You caught the Owl?"

"Yes." Matt raised his head.

"You kept this Shroud guy from killing himself?"

Matt's lips twitched. "Yes."

"You know, you _are_ allowed to let yourself feel good about the parts that went right tonight."

This time the lip-twitch turned into a smile, albeit fleeting.

"I was doing some thinking on the way over," Matt said. "About how easily that _could_ have been me."

Foggy nodded. "There but for the grace of Go—"

Matt shook his head. "No. Well, yes. Obviously. He has _something_ to do with it. But down here on Earth? I don't think I'd have made it this far, for this long, through this much if you weren't around to help me find my way back when I start heading toward that route." He unfolded his arms and extended one hand across the table toward Foggy. "You've been keeping me grounded for a long time, buddy. Tonight I got a look at what my life might have been like if you weren't." He took a breath. "I just... after an evening like that, I felt like I had to come around and just say... 'Thanks'."

"Uh... You're welcome," Foggy managed. Then, shifting the conversation back to less intense ground, "It's still your turn."

"Oh. Right." He tossed the dice, both men forgetting that he'd already done so, and moved forward.

"Hey!" Foggy exclaimed. "You hit the jackpot!"

Matt smiled and reached for the cash at the center of the board. But as he did, Foggy distinctly heard him murmur, "...my first semester at Columbia, when they were matching up roommates."

On an evening like this, Foggy knew why he still put up with everything Matt put him through...

...But between the two of them, they were still going to have to come up with a way that he could get out more.


End file.
